Plants and flowers have been a part of Rob Sloop’s life since his mom took over a flower shop when he was 11. Then, age 13, he started working with his grandfather, an avid gardener/landscaper on an estate in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Moving on to the Angel Plants wholesale nursery in Dix Hills, New York, in1996, freelancing weddings and doing plant installations in New York City, working six days a week, Sloop’s was now a life steeped in leaves and blooms and he was loving it. Then, in 1998, he was offered a job at Colonial Village Flowers in Scarsdale. In 2015, he was offered the shop.
A potted history, you might say. It wasn’t all plain sailing, though. Negotiations were protracted, and he had to move the shop a few doors along, but the new location brought a different vibe. Out went old containers and vases; in came new, more modern ones. Old customers stayed loyal and new ones started to appear. Business, Sloop said, was blooming.
Covid took its toll, but walk-ins are back, and online business – the shop has a notably user-friendly website – has really taken off. Today, his customers run the gamut. “Some are fussy; some are knowledgeable.” He knows most of them personally, many of them for years. “They just give me a price and say, ‘Rob, do your magic.’”
Are Scarsdale customers pickier than most? No pickier than customers elsewhere, apparently. All simply want quality flowers – “and obviously no mums or carnations,” Sloop added mordantly.
Most popular among those quality blooms are peonies, hydrangeas – which are having a tremendous season this year, in the landscape and in fashion and interior design — and ranunculuses, which are always “in fashion.” Although he doesn’t embrace fads as such, and while always respecting what his customers want, Sloop does nevertheless enjoy trying different styles and creating “out of the box” arrangements – “something they won’t forget,” as he put it. “I love doing that.”
Flowers come mainly from the Netherlands – which produces 1.7 billion blooms a year, representing 60% of the global trade – although top blooms are also sourced from Israel, Italy, Japan and even locally.
Asked about his own favorite flower, or flowers, Sloop said that’s a hard one to answer. A self-taught expert, he’s been in the field for almost 39 years now but said he’s still intrigued by the horticultural world, always eager to learn and study more.
“Tropical plants; outdoor plants in our Zone 7 (the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which perennial plants are most likely to thrive at a location); trees all around the world; growing vegetables; foraging; mushrooms; lichens; aquaponic plants, etc.,” he mused. “It’s endless for me.”
He’s also on an endless mission to offer customers new experiences that he hopes will be “something they won’t forget and that I won’t forget either” – experiences, he added, that will motivate him to delve even further into the horticultural world.
If that all sounds rather nebulous, there is at least one concrete plan in the cards: “Landscape design, in addition to my shop.”
His supportive customers, we suspect, will be lining up.
